This YouMoz entry was submitted by one of our community members. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Do you know how to recognize an unnatural link? Sometimes unnatural links are easy to spot. But, other times they are not. In this article we will take an in depth look at the link schemes section of the Google Quality Guidelines and discuss what this document says in regards to unnatural links. Along the way I will share some of my experiences in dealing with websites who have been given unnatural links penalties.

You can find the link schemes portion of the Google Quality Guidelines here. The article gives us an actual definition of an unnatural link saying that “creating links that weren’t editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner on a page, otherwise known as unnatural links, can be considered a violation of our guidelines.”

The first line of this article makes a bold statement about what is considered an unnatural link:

“Any links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site's ranking in Google search results may be considered part of a link scheme and a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.”

Really! Any link that is created with the intention of improving your site’s ranking in the Google search engine results in considered unnatural to Google. To understand why this is the case, let’s look at why links are important in the first place.

If you are at all interested in how Google works, I would highly recommend reading Steven Levy’s book, In the Plex. In this book, the author describes how Google started and why it stood out as a much better search engine than others in existence at that time. Early search engines such as Alta Vista, Infoseek, Lycos and Excite used something called “Information Retrieval” algorithms to determine in what order they displayed their search results. They used metrics such as looking at how often a word appeared on a page and the presence of meta keywords (which is why keyword stuffing used to be very effective!) But, quite often, these early search results were very inaccurate. A young computer science student named Larry Page discovered a brilliant way to improve on this accuracy by using hyperlinks. The early web consisted of a large number of academic papers and they would often cite other articles in the form of a hyperlink. Larry realized that pages that were cited more often were likely the most important pages on the web. He developed a system where the importance of a page was determined by how many high quality pages linked to it. Each of these links acted as a vote for the site. A site with lots of votes, especially if those votes came from trusted pages, would rank well in the search engine results. He named this system after himself, calling it PageRank.

While the Google algorithm today is much more complicated than in its early days, links are still a vital component of the algorithm. But, have you noticed that links are not working as well as they used to to improve your site’s rankings? It appears that Google is getting better at determining when a link is a true editorial vote for a site and when it is simply a self-made link. My personal belief is that many self-made links that used to help improve rankings are now simply ignored by the algorithm.

So let’s go back to the first line of the link schemes section of the Quality Guidelines. We can now see why any link that was made with the intention of manipulating a site’s ranking would be considered unnatural. It is because a self-made link is not a true vote for your site and should not count towards your site’s PageRank.

The quality guidelines go on to give more specific examples of links that could be considered unnatural:

Exchanging Money for Links or Posts that Contain Links

Most of these links are obvious examples of unnatural links. If I contact a webmaster and offer them money in exchange for them placing a link on their site then that’s not a true vote for my site. But some are not so obvious. What about getting a link in exchange for a donation to an organization? The page pictured on the right is one where you can get a link on a high PageRank page by paying $5 to donate to a software developer. It is very obviously a paid link and unnatural. But what if your company has made a donation to your local little league team and they have thanked you and linked to your company’s website? This is where it becomes a matter of motive and also scale. If you have a couple of links like this, they are probably just fine. But, if you start to use it as a linking tactic, and donate to many places that are known to link to their sponsors then you can run into problems. At this point, the Penguin algorithm is not likely to affect links like this. But, if you ever get a manual review from a webspam team member, a large number of self-made links like this could contribute to an unnatural links penalty. (If you're not sure on the differences between algorithmic ranking drops and manual penalties, you may want to read this article on the difference between Penguin and Unnatural Links.)

Exchanging Goods or Services for Links Or Sending Someone “Free” Product in Exchange for Them Writing About it and Including a Link

Sending free product to a blogger and asking for a review is a technique that many businesses have used in the past in order to gain a link. This is a tough part of the quality guidelines for many people to truly grasp because really, if I send you a product and you write about it, aren’t you vouching for my website? Shouldn’t that link count as a natural vote? According to Google, it is not a naturally earned link as it was procured by offering an incentive. I have seen a few examples of this type of link scheme leading to an unnatural links penalty.

In one example, a large brand sent free product to about two hundred mommy bloggers. The bloggers were encouraged to write about the product and in most cases this resulted in a followed link that passed pagerank. Two hundred contextual mentions of your brand is definitely going to make a positive difference in your rankings. But, because those links were incentivized, Google does not view them as natural. This site received an unnatural links penalty and came to me to help them remove it. We started by removing some obviously spammy links from low quality directories and bookmarking sites, but the penalty was not lifted until we addressed the mommy blogger links. I must say that many of the bloggers whom I contacted were irate with the fact that they were being asked to remove or nofollow the link. Many stated that they had not acted illegally and felt that we were off our rockers to want to remove this type of link. Links like this are definitely not illegal. But, if you want to stay in Google’s good books then this type of link needs to be nofollowed so that it doesn’t pass PageRank. If this is a link that you wouldn’t want if it were nofollowed, then you know that the reason why the link was made in the first place was to gain more PageRank. And, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, links that are self-made with the intention of improving a site’s PageRank are unnatural in Google’s eyes.

Excessive link exchanges ("Link to me and I'll link to you") or partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking.

The wording about partner pages is something that appeared in the Quality Guidelines in October of 2012. This part of the quality guidelines is hard to interpret as well. Let’s say that I am a real estate agent and I have a resource page on my site where I recommend real estate lawyers, home inspectors, mortgage brokers, and the like. And let’s say that some of those professionals also list me on their resource page. Is this against the quality guidelines? Probably not. But, let’s say that I see that this type of link is relatively easy to get. So, I decide to add a section of my site that recommends realtors around the world and I reach out to hundreds of realtors for link exchanges. I include them on my resource page and they also include me on theirs. And perhaps I also trade links with as many sites as I can that are even slightly related to real estate. Now it’s looking like a linking scheme.

The rule of thumb I would follow when creating a partner page on my site, and when getting links from other site’s resource pages is to only go after links that I would have wanted even if search engines didn’t exist. I’m ok with having some reciprocal links as long as they are relevant and provided that they are links that I would still want even if they were to be nofollowed.

This line was only recently adding to the link schemes section of the quality guidelines. The previous version had the following wording:

“Links that are inserted into articles with little coherence, for example:

most people sleep at night. you can buy cheap blankets at shops. a blanket keeps you warm at night. you can also buy a wholesale heater. It produces more warmth and you can just turn it off in summer when you are going on france vacation.”

I think most of us would agree that links like in the above example are unnatural. However, a good number of sites that I work on for unnatural link penalty removal have many links that come from articles that are not quite as obviously spammy. If you have used a large number of article marketing sites as link sources in the past, you may be in trouble with the Penguin algorithm or with an unnatural links penalty should you get a manual review. But, did you notice that the guidelines don’t even say, low quality articles? They even include guest posts. Does this mean that all guest posting is against the quality guidelines? According to Matt Cutts, head of webspam at Google, some guest posting is ok:

“The challenge with guest posting is that people have different conceptions about what it means. And so for a lot of people, a guest post is something that a fantastic author has thought deeply about, labored over, polished, put a lot of work into and then publishes on a highly reputable domain name.

Posts like that can be a great way to get your name out there, to build your reputation, to make yourself more well-known, potentially build links or traffic or help with your SEO.

The problem is that if we look at the overall volume of guest posting we see a large number of people who are offering guest blogs or guest blog articles where they are writing the same article and producing multiple copies of it and emailing out of the blue and they will create the same low quality types of articles that people used to put on article directory or article bank sites. If people just move away from doing article banks or article directories or article marketing to guest blogging and they don’t raise their quality thresholds for the content, then that can cause problems. On one hand, it’s an opportunity. On the other hand, we don’t want people to think guest blogging is the panacea that will solve all their problems.”

Does this mean that high quality guest posting is ok? The quality guidelines don’t make a distinction between high and low quality guest posting. They simply say that links created by large scale guest posting campaigns with keyword rich anchor text can be considered unnatural. I recently wrote about a site I consulted with that I believed had been penalized for using a large number of high quality guest posts in order to gain backlinks. Since writing that article, the site has actually received an example of an unnatural link in their profile from Google. That link was a scraped copy of a very informative and detailed article that was written for a reputable source. The article linked out to several helpful sites and also linked back to their site with their brand as anchor text and not a keyword. This was a tactic that was used on a very large scale to build links to this site. It worked well until the site received a manual review accompanied by a penalty.

So, does this mean that you should not do any guest posting at all? Did you catch the irony of the fact that I linked to my own site when making the statement that links from guest posts could be penalized? It is very unlikely that Google will penalize me for doing so as this is not a tactic that I have used on a large scale. If you get the occasional article published on another person’s site and that article is informative and helpful to the reader then you are probably not going to raise the webspam team’s ire. The obvious question though is “How much is too much?” When does Google consider guest posting a large scale linkbuilding tactic? I don’t know that anyone outside of Google knows the answer to that question.

Using automated programs or services to create links to your site

These are obvious examples of unnatural links. I’m working with one client right now who got an unnatural links penalty as the result of spending $10 at fiverr.com. He paid for two separate gigs where someone promised to build hundreds of links to his site containing his main keyword as the anchor text. Most of these fiverr gigs will use automated software that finds sites where they can create links by doing things like submitting spam comments or creating fake forum profiles. If you’ve created links with automated software, or if you’ve purchased any sort of packages like, “100 directory submissions for $15” then you’ve got unnatural links.

Text advertisements that pass PageRank

This is very similar to a paid link. If you’ve purchased advertising on a site then to stay within the quality guidelines that advertising needs to have a nofollow tag attached to it. I’m puzzled as to why the guidelines specifically say “Text” advertisements. I would be surprised if Google considered a followed link from an image ad as a natural link. If you have thoughts on this, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

Advertorials or native advertising where payment is received for articles that include links that pass PageRank

This is another example of a paid link. According to dictionary.com an advertorial is “an extended newspaper or magazine text advertisement that promotes the advertiser's product or services or special point of view but resembles an editorial in style and layout.” Advertorial links used to work well to help improve a site’s ranking. Quite often advertorial links are placed on high PR news websites in exchange for payment. If you’ve got links like these, then they really should be either nofollowed or removed if you want to remain within the Google Quality Guidelines.

Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites.

Here is the example that Google gives of this type of unnatural link:

"There are many wedding rings on the market. If you want to have a wedding, you will have to pick the best ring. You will also need to buy flowers and a wedding dress."

Just recently, Google has stated that links in press releases can go against the quality guidelines. In this Webmaster Central Hangout, Google employee John Mueller speaks about press releases:

At the 5:40 mark he says that they are treated as advertisements and should have nofollowed links. Then, at the 8:04 mark, Barry Schwartz asks for clarification on what John said about press releases and John says, “It’s something that we’ve seen over the past several years...We want to really make it clear that we essentially see this as an unnatural link.”

Now, if your company has used press releases in the past, my thought is that these links will not cause your site to incur a penalty provided that you have linked back to your site with your brand or your url and not keyword rich anchor text.

Low-quality directory or bookmark site links

Many of these links are very obviously low quality. I have worked with sites that had thousands of horribly low quality directory and bookmark links. These links were obviously just made for the the sole reason of getting a link.

But sometimes it is hard to say where Google draws the line between low quality and high quality directories. Most people who do link audits will agree that a link in dmoz.org is an ok link because Dmoz is known as a directory with high editorial standards. A Yellow Pages directory link or a Better Business Bureau link is likely just fine as well. If my local newspaper has a business directory is that ok? What if there is a directory that is closely related to my niche? I have seen people suggest that a directory listing is acceptable to Google provided that the directory has an editorial process (i.e. submissions are not auto-approved, and the directory has their full contact info published on-site). But, Google does not tell us exactly what makes a directory low or high quality. When I am trying to decide whether Google could consider a directory an unnatural one I ask myself whether this a link that would have been made even if search engines didn’t exist. Is this link likely to bring you traffic to your site? Is this a link that actual people will find helpful? If you can honestly say that this is a link that was not made with the intention of increasing your PR then it’s probably an ok link. However, I find that it is very difficult for most webmasters to be objective about these decisions. I often see them making rationalizations for unnatural links by saying that the directory has high PR and is therefore a high quality one or that the directory has not been deindexed so Google must think it is ok.

Links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites

Here is the example that Google gives:

Visitors to this page: 1,472

car insurance

The example that Google gives here is an obviously unnatural one. But, there are many examples of links embedded in widgets that are debatable. Google doesn’t make it clear in the quality guidelines whether some links from embedded widgets could be considered natural. What if I have created a mortgage calculator and I offer it to realtors and they embed it along with a link that says, “Mortgage calculator provided by example.com”? Here is what John Mueller says in a hangout about embeddable widget links. Start watching at 42:30:

He says, “If you are providing really useful widgets and you’re linking back to your website in a way that’s clear to the webmaster and maybe in a way that the webmaster can choose whether or not they want to link there then that’s something that might be a great service to those webmasters and might provide value on other websites and those webmasters may be happy enough that they say, ‘Oh this is a great service. I want to tell my friends about this great service that they are providing.’”

Before everyone takes this information and runs out to get a pile of widget links, I would advise caution. I have consulted with sites with unnatural links penalties that I believe have come from overuse of keyword rich anchor text in embeddable widgets. But to confuse matters, there are sites that use keywords as anchor text in their widgets and rank quite well with this technique. If you do searches for “free calorie counter” or “free hit counter” the sites that are ranking well are doing so on the power of links containing those keywords in embeddable widgets. My personal instinct is that Google thinks these links are acceptable because they are actually linking to a calorie counter or a hit counter. Now, if those same widgets linked back using the keywords, “best weight loss site” or “New York SEO Company” then they probably would not do well with a manual webspam review.

Added: Just after I wrote this, Matt Cutts released a video about the use of links in widgets:

When this video came out, many reported that Matt had released a video stating that widget links must be nofollowed, however, if you watch the video you will see that Matt said a nofollow may be a good idea depending on the scale of what you are doing.

Widely distributed links in the footers of various sites

A good example of this is a web design company that places “Seattle Web Design” as a followed link in the footer of each of their clients’ sites. There is nothing inherently wrong with footer links. It’s not as if they are at any more risk for invoking a penalty as a link placed somewhere else on the page. But, if they are self-made links then they are not truly a vote for your site but rather they should be considered an advertisement and Google says that this type of link should be nofollowed. Google is unclear as to whether it is acceptable to place a followed link containing your url in your footers (For example, “Web design by www.examplewebdesign.com”) or whether they are only concerned about links that contain anchor text. However, check out what John Mueller says at the 27:04 mark of this video:

When asked about whether or not it was ok to have a followed site-wide footer link containing the web design’s brand name as an anchor, he said, “It’s something where it really should be clear that the webmaster is linking to this site on purpose and not that it’s something that is required. One of the ways you can guess at that is to see if you can see if this is a link that is going directly to the domain more or less, or does it have some kind of keyword rich anchor text that starts to look really complicated. So if you are saying this site was designed by www.marketsharewebdesign.com or something like that then that’s something where generally we’d say that that’s ok.” He then goes on to backtrack a little and says that if you want to be absolutely sure you are not breaking the quality guidelines that you could use a nofollow tag. He also says, “If you’re doing this and this is essentially the ONLY kind of link that your website has then this is starting to look at little bit complicated from our point of view in the sense that it might appear that these links are essentially a requirement of actually having this website made rather than something that the webmaster is doing on their own free will.” He says that this type of link can look like a link in exchange for product (the website) which is not in keeping with the quality guidelines.

How Google decides that it is “clear that the webmaster is linking to this site on purpose” is a mystery to me. It’s possible that they take into account whether every link pointing to the site has exactly the same surrounding text and anchor text, or whether the site actually has other types of naturally earned links as well. I would love for you to leave your opinion on footer links in the comments section after this article.

Forum comments with optimized links in the post or signature

These links are usually pretty obvious examples of unnatural links. Now, if you happen to have used your keyword as anchor text for a followed forum signature link in the past, you’re not likely to have the Google police knocking on your door. But, if this has been a linking tactic that was used on a wide scale then you have cause for concern.

Conclusions

PHEW. We made it through the list. Usually when I walk someone through the quality guidelines, the obvious question that is asked is, “If all of these links are unnatural, then what kind of links can I build?” If you want to remain completely within the guidelines of Google then the answer to this question is to focus on doing things that truly earn links rather than building them yourself. This is no easy task however. Right now, in some niches, I believe that it is almost impossible to compete without doing some form of unnatural linking. The sites that are ranking in competitive verticals, often are ones that are breaking the quality guidelines but doing so in ways that at this point Google cannot detect. Google recently launched an update that was specifically designed to reduce the effectiveness of unnatural links in high earning niches such as payday loans and porn. They are continually working on improving the algorithms, specifically the Penguin algorithm with the goal of completely reducing the effectiveness of self-made links. Gone are the days where you can easily rank a website well by creating a large volume of self-made links. I believe that we will see dramatic changes in our industry over the next few years. As Google gets even better at enforcing the quality guidelines, an SEO who has the intelligence and creative thinking to be able to find ways to naturally promote a website is going to be in very high demand. If you have these skills, there is definitely money to be made.

What do you think? Is it possible to stay completely within the Google Quality Guidelines and successfully rank a website? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Get fresh SEO data, insights, and tracking

Comments
71

This is a well-researched post, and while I appreciate the effort (and with the greatest respect), I must say that there's no news here. Google's newest guidelines are the same old rules they've always given us. "Don't worry about Google - worry about your users."

Google doesn't like "schemes" - they never have. The Internet marketing community as a whole has invented numerous schemes over the years - from forum links to spammy directory submissions to social bookmarketing to spun articles - and these schemes have been penalized by Google.

Yet when it comes right down to it, the difference between a "scheme" and "marketing" is largely semantic, isn't it? If I do something awesome that builds lots of links, I'm a great marketer. If I do something sneaky that builds lots of links, I'm a spammer...or a clever guy who saw an opportunity and took it.

If I buy a link in an editorial post on a trusted site, I'm a spammer. Or a great PR person.

If I earn a guest post on a popular blog, I'm a great marketer...but I'm a spammer if I use the wrong link text.

Etc.

Parsing Google's guidelines for specifics about what a good link is or isn't is the definition of wasting time, mostly because good links have always looked the same: A good link is one that people will click on. If you're placing links that aren't generating some referral traffic, than you're doing it wrong.

Great points Jason! I would totally agree that none of this is new news. However, I think that a large portion of the SEO community focuses on building links not knowing that self made links are against the guidelines.

Google keeps saying, "Build good stuff that people will want to share." But the truth is that unless you already have a huge following, no one is going to want to share (and link to) your stuff unless you have the skills to market it well.

I really like your thoughts that a good link is one that people will click on. A while back, someone asked John Mueller in a hangout about the benefits of getting a link on an outdated resource page and the answer was that if it is a link that never gets clicked on then it's probably not passing a lot of value. Now, in the past this was not true because sites could rank on the power of spammy article links quite well. But I personally think that as Google is evolving they are getting really good at only counting links that are actually valuable to people.

Marie - It's fair to point out that some members of the SEO community (can we use that phrase on Moz.com? I thought it was forbidden or something, LOL) don't yet realize that the things they're doing are hurting their clients.

It's also fair to say that your summary is comprehensive, and therefore a very good resource for these folks.

I think that's a bit harsh, Jason. While SEOs who keep up-to-date with best practices and also follow the 'common sense' approach to white-hat SEO (i.e. anything that looks bad probably is bad) may know all of the above already, it's a good reminder and reassurance for those who aren't too sure. For example, reviews are a bit of a funny/debatable one (as discussed in an earlier comment) and the widgets one is pretty much hot-off-the-press, so I think there's still very valuable information here.

I appreciate what you're saying, but there's nothing to debate. Google can't possibly determine the difference between a legitimate product review and a "placed" review, nor can they determine the difference between a legit media mention and a paid mention. Therefore, there's very little reason to ponder these things.

Just build links that generate referral traffic. Write your anchors to get clicks, put the links in a place people will be likely to click on them, work to get social mentions of your products/services/resources, etc.

It's good to have resources like this for those that are new to the industry, I suppose, so I agree with you in that sense.

"Google can't possibly determine the difference between a legitimate product review and a "placed" review, nor can they determine the difference between a legit media mention and a paid mention."

I absolutely agree, but it's good to know nonetheless. On the reviews front, a few years back I did it for a client, thinking there was no harm or problem in doing so. Mike Essex (of Koozai fame) has written a few Moz/YouMoz posts in the past about it, too. It seems like one of those ones that's an odd one for Google to flag, but then again, knowing that it could be a problem, it's good to know as it may dictate strategy (i.e. a client considering it may want to avoid it - in bulk, anyway...)

Yeah I'm on the fence here on this issue here as well. Not all of it may be news per se, but at the same rate, you're just now coming out on the opposite end of the Battle of No-Follow vs. Do-Follow that went full force here in July. I think a re-analysis and redefinition of the rules/regulations/conspiracies surrounding how Google views a link has been due and was in order for the current time. So...the purpose of this post wasn't to be used as news, but more of a compilation of answers to questions the uneducated may still be struggling with.

I hate to use this wording, but I think Google is playing with this concept of "it's all about the heart behind the link." I think that's a great approach to have, but if it was about the heart or mindset of the person earning the link, then people wouldn't be trying to use the internet for monetary growth purposes. The reason people and companies want to grow is to gain exposure and earn money. I'm sure there are very few people online organically looking for a link "just for the heck of it" and "because my following and friends would like it." My time is more valuable than that. Leaving this comment a bit open-ended...

As for Google's intentions, my guess is that they want to distract marketers with conversations like this while simultaneously scaring website owners and publishers into linking very selectively.

In the short term, selective and excruciatingly careful linking is a great way to address Google's spam problem. In the long run, I see these rules as being unsustainable.

Take the "nofollowed" link. In an era where linking out can officially (but not necessarily) hurt your site, nofollowing is the only rational course for most site owners...which leads to lots and lots of great & useful links being nofollowed out of an abundance of caution.

At what point is Google forced to devalue the "nofollow" attribute entirely as a result of these over-zealous website owners? And if that point is reached, won't paid links become just as valuable as "earned" links? That's really going to screw things up, isn't it? :-)

Therefore, I say keep marketing your company or your clients by obtaining logical links. Logical links convey a sense of trust to the user, help people find what they're looking for, and ultimately generate referral traffic. There's no need to worry about anything else.

I really like your reference to PR since it seems that PR and Spam are being interchangeably on some SEO related blogs. They're not. I'd assume that an advertorial on an in niche blog should hold up fine after any number of updates, but those Mommy blogs with 90% of the posts related to give aways....not so much.

You've definitely highlighted a big problem here. The rules are pretty arbitrary and subject to interpretation. There is no objective answer here that any Google algorithm can ever perfectly uncover. How can they determine intent by algorithm? I don't think its possible to equitably do this.

I'm really surprised you can be penalized for the blogger samples. Yes, it's not natural because it's an exchange but the blogger is posting up a legitimate review of a product - why wouldn't they link to the actual product? How does Google differentiate a review of someone who purchased something on their own versus someone who received a sample with the sole intent of link to said product?

Great article though. It really shows how hard you have to work to earn healthy links - all of these are shortcuts and can lead to harsh penalties.

All good points. You asked how Google would differentiate a review of someone who purchased something on their own vs a sample and I think the answer lies in the scale. If you've got a smattering of reviews from people who have purchased your product then that's great! But, when I'm auditing link profiles it's usually very obvious where the company has sent free product out in order to get reviews.

1) Why does Google think everybody cares about passing PageRank? Is it just mean that couldnt care less what my PageRank is? Or is it just their way of saying something else...?

2) I actually the shift will get worse for a while, then start to move backwards once they realise how ridiculous it all is. They can't "govern" the web regarding links the way they're currently trying to. Equally, they contradict their on policy just in your article here...

On the one hand, Cutt's has said it's fine to put in labour and hours to polish up a great piece which can be placed on another domain, which helps multiple things - including SEO. On the other hand, they've said that if you've actively made the effort to gain the link it's not natural?

Lastly, why does Cutt's or any other Google member offer advice on acquiring links if the act of acquring a link is against the guidelines? It's one big mess at the moment, but every company makes mistakes. I'm sure over time they'll see how ridiculous it is - namely with the mummy blogs type incidents.

I think that Google is talking about "links that pass PageRank" as another way of saying "Links that are created in order to manipulate the search results." I think another way to say it is that they don't care about nofollowed links (because those don't pass PageRank), but they do care about followed links.

I think what Matt Cutts was trying to say about guest posting is that guest posting can be ok, but NOT if the point of the guest post is to get a link. And I understand that it is hard to discern motive in some cases. But, for example, take this post that you are reading now. I worked for many hours to put this together and although I included a link to my site that was not the main reason for me to write this post. By getting a post published on Moz, I build credibility for myself and my business. I can tell people, "Hey! I've been published by Moz!" and also get business from this post. So, I spent many hours crafting a (hopefully) fantastic piece of content so that I can build up my perceived authority on the web as someone who understands unnatural links. This type of thing is something that I could not easily do at a large enough scale to turn into a link building campaign. So, I think that Matt is saying that if an authoritative site agrees to publish your guest post and you have included a helpful link to your site then this is ok and this link will pass PageRank and therefore contribute to your site's authority. But, if you are doing large scale guest posting or article marketing then your motive has switched to one of "how can I build links to my site" as your main objective and this looks like manipulation.

Lastly, why does Cutt's or any other Google member offer advice on acquiring links if the act of acquring a link is against the guidelines?

I wouldn't say that the "act of acquiring a link" is against the guidelines. Far from it! The act of creating links on a large enough scale to manipulate the search results is against the guidelines. But, in order to truly acquire a link you need to create fantastic content that people really want to link to and that is definitely in line with what Google wants.

How do you see the likes of infographics and other link bait in a few years time? Not the relevant ones that provide value to the user (such as the awesome beginners guide to SEO by moz) but the tenuously linked pieces of content? Hypothetically, let's say it's an amazing infographic about the Houses in Game of Thrones (original, huh? ha). The content and graphics are stunning and it's the first of its kind, but the link is heading back to a home decoration website. Unnatural link? Great, original content, but a bit tenuous.

How about the same idea, but instead of it being an infographic about the Game of Thrones, it's about the most popular colours on front doors. Made by the same people, shared on (largely) the same sites. Same links, less tenuous. Unnatural?

After reading your post though, I suspect it may be the case that they are BOTH unnatural as they were both intended to be shared and manipulate link profiles.

This is a tough question to answer! I think it depends on how the infographic is shared. For example, if I created a fantastic infographic and didn't provide an embed code and people found it and shared it and linked to it because they loved it then this is totally natural. But let's say I created a great infographic and provided an embed code and linked back with my url. Is this natural? Perhaps. But, what if I made that same infographic but I provided an embed code that linked back with something like, "best SEO company". Well that's obviously unnatural.

I think that infographics can be a way to gain links. In your scenario, I don't think it matters that the same sites shared it. But I think that if it looks to Google like you are manipulating the SERPS with it (i.e. keyword anchor) then you could have issues. But it's also not as black and white because this single infographic is not likely to get you penalized. However, if you've got 16 infographics and this is your only type of link (for example) then Google may recognize that people are not actually linking to the site naturally but that it is a pattern of manipulation.

so to be "safe" (if that even matters) we should focus our link building strategies around motivating other people to link to us. We need to do something so ridiculous that people will actually want link to us... then we can hire an outreach team to do "sales" for the link bait ;)

I really am beginning to think that Google doesn't know what to do. I think basically Google will only be happy if they completely discount all links (Dofollow and Nofollow) and choose themselves who gets to rank where. Unless they do this, they will always have the problem of links.

I am currently helping a client that was penalized by Google. Your article has really helped me understand Google's Link Schemes page. I created an excel spreadsheet that maps each inbound link to each Link Scheme.

These are what the columns look like

Inbound link - URL

LInk Scheme rule...for example This link is this kind of scheme.....Low-quality directory or bookmark site links

Access to website....Does the company have access to the website to fix the link?

PR --- If the website has a high PR, the link may be worth fighting for

Disavow - Should this link be disavowed?

Comments

I thought I would share this with everyone. I am sure your excel spreadsheets are better...

Your sheet sounds a lot like mine. The one thing I would change is that I wouldn't make PR a major factor in deciding whether a link is unnatural. I have lots of examples of natural links that are on PR0 pages and unnatural ones that are on PR5 pages.

My spreadsheet also contains columns for email addresses (on site and whois) and urls of contact forms so that I can show the webspam team the efforts that I have made in contacting site owners to get links removed.

Also, if you use an excel sheet, be sure that you put everything on Google docs when you show it to the webspam team. They're reluctant to open attached files due to fear of malware.

I'll eliminate the PR as well. I think having that type of list is probably important so you know what to fight for-but why share it with Google? I mean, if they don't want you using that information, why let them know in no uncertain terms that you are?

What I do is sort my spreadsheet by extracting the domain name and then I sort alphabetically. I usually only assess one link from each domain which makes it a bit faster. There are automated tools out there that help to assess links but personally I find them inaccurate. It is a real pain to check each domain manually but I haven't found an easier way.

I have question on this. I work with a finance company, we place an image of our logo that is a link to a customized page that is made for our merchants clients to apply for our services through the merchants website. Is this a link I should place a no-follow on?

Not necessarily. I manage a large informational site and I have several sites that have linked to me using my keyword because they chose to and not because I asked for it. It's unlikely that Google will penalize me for that.

The obvious question though is how Google would know if those links are naturally earned or whether I orchestrated those keyword anchored links in order to try to manipulate the search results. I personally believe it's about patterns. If I have 50 links to my site and 48 of them are blogroll links using my keyword as anchor then it's pretty obvious that that didn't happen naturally.

There's nothing wrong with having a link with your keyword as anchor provided it was an earned link and not self made.

Hi my name is Stacy and my webstore domain www.poshbabystore.com has a bunch of spammy and porn sites linking to me. I did NOT put them there nor did i pay for someone to do so either. I am thinking a very cruel person did this to my business and the end game was to ruin me and have me shut down or the very least cause me to lose business. And guess what it worked! I am not getting any traffic and sales are so bad i may have to shut down! I dont have the energy to do the disavow tool cause there are hundreds of them!! I instead changed my domain name for my store but i am forced to keep the poshbabystore parked but not redirecting to the new domain i replaced it with. I just want to cry! I dont know what to do! I dont have the money to pay someone to fix it cause i am barely even getting enough money to pay for my bills and food and orders from the store. Its killing me! HELP!!!

"Yet when it comes right down to it, the difference between a "scheme" and "marketing" is largely semantic, isn't it? If I do something awesome that builds lots of links, I'm a great marketer. If I do something sneaky that builds lots of links, I'm a spammer...or a clever guy who saw an opportunity and took it."

And with this note in mind, one can't help think how "GOOGLE" has become an unofficial judge of both morality and legality, and it has tremendous power. For me, it isn't Google's job to find the cunning marketing schemes. Google's job should be limited to merely indexing the internet and doing so WITHOUT ranking. Relevance should be CHOSEN by the user ONLY, not Google with criteria such as proximity, company age, usage reviews, etc. It might take 3 more clicks This would put an end to Google's hegemonic bullying on the internet via search result control on both the user and the companies.

Frankly the Penguin algorithm and any rules Google has, are only on the surface intending to "protect" users from marketing schemes or to ensure 'fairness' and other such honest benevolence; the truth is that by following these rules, Google becomes even more powerful and that these "rules" safeguard above all else Google's interests. And why should Google set the standard about how we search and go about marketing on the Internet, by "ranking us" in her own arbitrary way? The problem is Google's monopoly. If you want the Internet to get better, then use other search engines too. We ourselves have reposed too much on Google.

Now imagine if I actually paid for a series of television advertisements on multiple television channels or I were advertising on bus stops, or distributing flyers and brochures, which were all "linking" to my business products, these would be unnatural links to my business... and a Google telling me you can't do it this way because it's not genuine, you have to do it another way, the Google way, otherwise you'll get a penalty. If it were up to me, I'd bring Google down to its knees and replace it with ten or more Search Engines vying for users to favor them in a bloody red ocean of competition. Then none of this nonsense would exist and we could all be spared Google's benevolence. The funny part is if you add a little add revenue for the big G spot, suddenly your page never gets flagged with a penalty...

I'll quote another post from above by Nick Stamoulis:

"It basically seems like any link you as the site owner/marketer would set out to create could be considered unnatural. But for a brand new website how can you "earn" those quality links without getting the ball rolling on your own?"

Exactly. through these rules Google wants to ensure that you ONLY get business by ONLY searching through ONLY Google, and make this the ONLY way that you can get traffic through to your website. This is rather sinister I reckon. i think it is imperative all web developers and SEO analytics teams banded together and slapped this bully down somehow.

And don't get me wrong, for the record, I love Google and Google products. But there's a limit. When you have a business, it literally seems that you can't get any link out there that isn't 'illegitimate' according to Google.

The problem is with Google's search results algorithms and that it's worried people will manipulate this. That's Google's problem, not ours. In fact, the biggest problem is at the root: Google ranks pages. It shouldn't. The USER should. And all this nonsense will disappear, both the need for creating "unnatural" links and Google's stronghold on your an my business.

We've handed the internet over to Google, by merely discussing on such matters as though they are the only way to resolve our business exposure. The mere presence of such extensive articles is a case in point of how deeply ingrained Google dominance has become.

I saw this again and now I know what is "unnatural link" in Google eyes. Based on my experience unnatural is link with money keyworded anchor (mostly; or alt) but total number of "mk" links should be bigger than 25-30% of total number of links.Now look at this situation:- somebody bought laptops for a company from our shop with huge discount- he's (manager, director, doesn't matter) so happy that he's putting everywhere (they have many websites - local services in a couple of states) short "review" and at the end is link to us with the same anchor as above "cheap laptops"

And now is this natural or not? Natural, but Google will consider them as unnatural... Why? Because changing anchor from money keyword to neutral or compound (still dofollow!) makes anchor "natural" (from my experience) and Google lifts penalty. The key is to find those "bad" of course.

This type of link would stand out like a sore thumb if I was doing a link audit for this site no matter what the anchor is. Now, at this point I am guessing that Penguin might catch these links if they were keyword anchored. But, probably not if they were anchored with something else. But, if this site got a manual review, it could possibly lead to a manual action. It depends on how many of these links there are.

What makes a link natural is not the anchor but rather whether or not this is a link that truly honestly would exist even if links didn't matter for ranking.

Ok so Google can't say this or that is unnatural because doesn't have evidence we did it. I agree this will be manual action but we didn't do it so we get manual action for "natural" link. I think there's a possibility to have 100% money keywords as anchors but every anchor has to be different. Not tested, not seen... but I think possible.

Hello Marie, No doubt that you have made a great post but there are some questions in my mind that i want to ask to you.

According to Google guidelines we can see that "Links with optimized anchor text in articles or press releases distributed on other sites", the first thing in this guideline is that links with optimized anchor text in article are unnatural links so in your above article there is a link of your website behind this anchor text "high quality guest posts in order to gain back-links." please say something about this that we can also use these types of links behind these anchor texts and i also noticed that the many links in the article are do-follow.

Other thing that i want to ask is to elaborate this sentence "you have linked back to your site with your brand or your URL and not keyword rich anchor text" because i really didn't understand this so kindly give an example please.

Now the last thing i want to ask from you is that according to your post there is nothing clear about directory submission. That which directories are of high quality and which are of low quality. I think that the PR shows the trust of Google on any website so the directories with the high PR should be the high quality directories because Google has his trust on them.

Hi Shaharyar. I think that the main point that Google is trying to make is that any link that you make on your own for the purposes of helping your site rank higher is one that goes against the quality guidelines. They want all of your links to be earned.

In my opinion there are some directories that are acceptable, but the PR of the directory doesn't mean a thing. I will call a directory listing natural if it is one that truly drives traffic to the site. If it is a link that rarely gets clicked then it's probably made for SEO purposes.

Regarding anchor text, if my business name was "Joe's pool supplies" then my brand is "Joe's pool supplies", my url may be www.joespoolsupplies.com but keyword rich anchor text could be "pool supplies" or "pool supplies Atlanta".

Hi Marie thanks for replying. About anchor text if i have a business of box printing or something like that then what is my brand name? because if i use "box printing" or "custom boxes" or many other like that then these are surely keyword rich anchor texts.

So if me put our link where it is highly helpful to others as you put here then its okay.

Thanks for sharing Marie!! The data and the views you have shared on a topic are really good. I think Google is also not clear about the actual number of links generated. Google is day by day making changes in its policies and algorithm and it is really become tough for the webmaster to retain or to stabilize their position in search engine. Insightful Post.

Thanks for putting together everything Google has recently shared about unnatural links. The most annoying aspect is how significantly Google's guidelines have shifted over the past two years, with more and more links tactics being classified as unnatural. The recent additions of press releases and guest posts are very good examples.

Although up until 2012 gaining links was the most powerful way to rank, these days removing links (if your site is in a very competitive niche and has been building links for years) is probably more important than gaining new links. For such cases link removals should be carried out regardless of ranking drops have taken place or not. Nowadays, retaining high positions is a more realistic goal than trying to increase rankings further because of the high risks associated with pretty much any kind of link building activity in scale.

I would also like to share some personal experiences:

Press releases - With regards to your comment that press releases from some years ago not causing issues I can confirm this is not the case. In WMT I have come across a few examples URLs from press releases that were published 2-3 years ago. This is definitely something Google has been unfair given how recently they communicated that links in press releases may be causing issues and should be no followed.

Text Vs Image Ads - I guess the reason Google only refers to text ads only is because their ability to manipulate PageRank compared to image links. This is not only because of the anchor text manipulation but also because if a text ad is placed within a semantically relevant page it can pass even more value. Image links on the other hand pass little to no contextual relevance, hence their ability to manipulate PR is minimal IMO, regardless of what is included in the alt text.

Thanks for sharing your views on a topic which is considered as mystery, since google is never clear about the actual volume of links generated through any medium. Google is changing its policy governing the back link, and every day it is becoming more difficult for the SEO community to become stable at a point for some time (obviously not for always).

For authors who are not well known, but knowledgeable enough to write brilliantly on a specific topic will ever get benefited for their writing if it is for the sake of their website. It may be possible, having a diversified back link profile could cause an unnatural link penalty only because they are not well known on the web.

I can usually tell from auditing link profiles whether guest posts are likely to be a problem in Google's eyes. They're not out to punish ALL guest posting. If an author has been published on multiple sites that may not be a bad thing. But, when it's been a tactic used exclusively to build links there's usually a footprint such as the same anchor text being used to link back to the site or very similar looking articles.

The engines have become so sophisticated in their ability to detect unnatural links! I remember when a lot of these tactics used to work. In my first internship, I spent hours backing samples to send to bloggers! For blogger reviews, does it make a difference if the blogger discloses they received a sample and states that all opinions are their own? Or does Google refer that *all* such links be nofollowed?

My motive by sending out samples is for the promotion of my website to their audience. One of my requirements for a blogger is that she must have a social following and write most posts. This isn't only for links at all!

It basically seems like any link you as the site owner/marketer would set out to create could be considered unnatural. But for a brand new website how can you "earn" those quality links without getting the ball rolling on your own? And I know people have abused guest blogging but I'm not about to stop writing for great sites when it works so well for driving traffic, building the brand, and establishing new touch points. My thought is to stick with links that are designed to drive traffic and build your authority, and not just grow your link profile.

Really interesting stuff Marie. Having finally gotten out of a manual penalty myself (a well earned one, I might add) I'm trying to pay much closer attention to guidelines, no matter how often they happen to be changing. The whole guest blogging and blogger sample program thing is a bit troublesome for a retail outfit, since those both seem to be natural ways to build links and the guidelines seem to leave plenty of room for personal opinion to play in. It is pretty crazy though, when I look at the top 5 sites in my niche, every single one of them is blatantly breaking guidelines in one or another.

Thanks for sharing. I am guessing that as Google gets better and better at identifying unnatural links, soon, those sites that are breaking the guidelines will start to decline. If you're able to truly attract natural links it might not put you at #1 right now, but I think that a site that can do that now will be much further ahead as Penguin evolves.

As a relative newbie to SEO this has certainly clarified a few points for me so thank you very much! Seems like very fine lines between what Google will and won't allow but sticking to variety and quality although harder work will be far more worth it in the long run.

Awesome stuff as usual. I wonder if you can tell me a bit more about the Exchanging Goods or Services for Links section..

How does Google identify this? How did they know, in the example provided, that the company had sent out free products in exchange for brand mentions?

If I want to offer wholesale rates in exchange for a link, how would Google be able to tell I did this if I keep it to a verbal/written agreement and not publicly stated? I'm assuming they wouldn't and that they way they found out in your example was the article referred to the product being sent to them for free.

Seems weird though like movies and video games and books do this often - send out free copies to reviewers and gain positive mentions/links thus building their marketing efforts both digital and otherwise.

I think it all depends on patterns. If I emailed you privately and offered you $100 to link to my site Google's not going to know about this. But, if I also emailed 100 other people then I could start to create a pattern. I think at this point if you are smart enough with your link creation then it may not get caught. But, I can tell you from doing many link audits that it is usually quite obvious where the patterns are.

When I'm auditing a new site I'll come across a link and go, Hmmm....that's probably a natural one. Then I see another similar site that has a similar type of link and I start to wonder, and then I see that there are several others and I recognize that there is a pattern here. As an example, I am working with one site that makes a particular type of product. I came across a post in a personal blog about someone who had used this product and really liked it. It was a short, 10 line blog post. Fair enough. Someone liked the product enough to write about it. Then, I came across another one - a short post about how much they liked this product. And another and another. All of them were about the same length and were posts that didn't really seem to fit in to the rest of their blog. It soon became obvious to me that it was a linking tactic.

Google may look at other factors too such as whether these links appeared all during a short time frame.

There are other ways that I believe that Google could pick up this type of link algorithmically. For example, let's say that I found a site where a blogger has written some paid reviews. I want that blogger to link to me but I don't want it to look paid so I instruct him/her on how to do so in a natural looking way. Looking at that individual post, Google could not catch on that it is paid. However, it's possible that Google can see that this site has a tendency to link out to sites in a way that is unnatural and as such is not trusting links from this site as much. And, perhaps I have links from 30 other sites that Google is not trusting completely. All of a sudden there is a pattern. I'm not saying that this is how the algorithm works for sure, but I can tell you that I could probably create an algorithm to detect how likely a link is to be the result of a paid review, and I am just a nobody who has done a number of link audits. If I could do this, then the brilliant engineers at Google could create one for sure.

I had another situation where a site had a piece of content that had gained links from some very high authority sites' resource pages. But the content was really poor quality. I looked at it and said, "How on earth could this short, useless article gain so many good links?" Then, I found a second article that had similar links and then several more. It soon became obvious that the articles weren't attracting these links naturally but that the SEO company likely had paid for placement on these resource pages. In this situation, the site owner removed all of these low quality articles causing 404 errors and essentially removing the links to those pages. We applied for reconsideration and their manual penalty was revoked.

In many cases, the type of link you are talking about may not be picked up algorithmically but the patterns could be detected on a manual review.

One thing I wanted to mention here as well, I believe this is industry dependent as well. In my wine niche, there are always samples going to bloggers and other (ok, I'll be honest here) more respected members of the media. Given that it's costing at least $50 for each blogger shipment, it doesn't scale like a software company could or whatever.

awesome post, Marie. Regarding the mom bloggers you mentioned in the article I am curious to know if the back links were keyword based, or if they were brand related keywords.

Also, you did not mention EDU links in your article - in some niches it is quite easy to get edu links by giving a small discount for students and alumni of that university. Do you think this tactic will be considered as spammy? All the links are legit, and not keyword focused.

While getting back links these days I almost never try to tell what anchor text to use. I remember reading an article from Eric Ward in which he says that he never tells people what anchor text to use. I do think that one way Google notices link manipulation is by looking at the keyword anchor text ratio. Irrespective of the tactic, too much focus on keywords can be dangerous. I wanted to know what your thoughts are on this, and how effective brand related keywords are for ranking.

Hi Arjun. The mommy blogger links in the example that I gave had a mixture of keyword and brand links so it is hard to say whether both were a part of the penalty. However, the quality guidelines do say that exchanging free product for a link is not acceptable and they don't really say that a brand or url anchored link would be ok.

Regarding the .edu links, if you're creating a pattern then if you ever had a manual review this could be an issue. I currently have one site undergoing reconsideration right now where we have links like this. We have tried to keep them so we'll see what Google says. Again, the keyword is not really the issue here.

I am also looking at a project that was hit by running un-natural links... It is both time consuming and complicated. You have to both repair and recover.....

I just interviewed a new SEO guy to be part of our team and his exact statement was " better to ask forgiveness than permission or follow the WMG'S"..... " i think hes still looking for work".......

I have found that when you do a GOOD job for someone they will tell some one.... it is not, in my opinion possible to follow the guidelines 100% and still rank... all the time, every time, and believe that is part of the reason Google keeps things a little vague..

Case in point: there is a DENTAL WEBSITE NETWORK with more than 20k website pages out there with 85-90% exact matching content, all do follow pages and are indexed by the big G. They have been reported however all still rank......

Google is simply hit and miss on their rules, govern who and when they want and want nothing more than than the ad rev.

I am not impress here what you have write about.. Link building is the most effective tools for getting position in SERP. Even when any new comer start SEO for particular website to complete his on-page regarding to design and development. First he analyze the off page of top most competitor of his industries. His raw data of analysis suggest him get links whenever you find.. SERP position Analysis hurt him all over.